Standalone: What makes CC fun?

[zakhennahr]

This is both to get a general feel of other people's opinions, and to make it easier to figure out what to do for the game if Siretu does go standalone. *SPOILER ALERT* Make it 2D and use XNA, I can (and will) help with the code */SPOILER*

So, at a *very* high level, what makes CC fun, from my experience:

• The obvious, teamwork and the satisfaction of knowing you did well both individually and as a team.
• The not-so-obvious, the fact that you have so much variety in terms of strategy and how you use your teamwork abilities.
• The very-well-hidden, the implicit class system we have. I am personally a Wraith Pilot, so my stat points have been allocated in mosquito-style rape-age. Whyte is a captain, with all of his points in "Victorious Leadership". And so on.

Before jumping into harder questions, let's first answer this one.

On a side note, I prepended "Standalone: " to the thread name for easy categorization. As such, please keep all discussion on-topic here.

[Red-Rocket]

its a game that can be taken very seriously but is all the more fun when everyone is screwing around

[Siretu]

This is a very important subject.

The problem I've been having recently is that I have found the BCvBC battles to be unsatisfactory. The reason I feel this is that either one team is surprised and gets owned or if both teams play properly, it feels like most people cant contribute to the fight. Sure, there are a lot of things to do. Loading missiles, repairing the ship, manning some other consoles etc but most of these don't feel like you're actually doing any really contribution.

[Red-Rocket]

we could always add a simple sensor system to BCs and/or have a way to instantly turn on shields without the need to charge up before battle starts

[Sky]

we could always add a simple sensor system to BCs and/or have a way to instantly turn on shields without the need to charge up before battle starts

Well, there goes the surprise attack...

[WhyteDragon]

we could always add a simple sensor system to BCs and/or have a way to instantly turn on shields without the need to charge up before battle starts

Look into the Shield Boost ability.

I will concede the issue that the greatest contribution likely comes from taking either Power, Navigation, or Weapons. Repairing, Missile Loading, Science, and Small Ship Piloting often feel as if they don't have that much impact unless it's a destroyer, and I have never even seen anyone successfully board an enemy battlecruiser after the patch aside from myself.

Repairing could be made more interesting if it was more dynamic, having to repair critical points on the battlecruiser and such, but the current setup doesn't really call for that.

Missile Reloading, since your vision is dedicated primarily to the interior view, doesn't allow you to observe any of the combat and in that sense is quite dull. Moreover, bots can do it. Honestly, I don't see any potential way to make this better to begin with.

Science is pretty boring in itself, and most of the time bots will do it.

Small ships? Maybe if it was a Corvette or Minelayer you might feel a sense of contribution, but a lot of other ships don't cut it unless it's the destroyer. Especially since all you're doing is sitting behind your BC and hitting fire. SS + BC vs. BC fighting just isn't dynamic enough.

So in short, while all of these tasks may be essential a lot of them aren't really engaging. If you want to make them more rewarding, you need to find ways to make them a bit more active and engaging to the mind rather than 'spam repair kits' or 'hit X and hold F.'

[Red-Rocket]

boarding sucks because auto-turrets are to strong and you dont get any Player and/or NPC allies to board with you
(i suggest removing all autoturrets except the 2 that gaurd the bridge)

Small ships cant take more then a couple of direct hits from BCs because BCs hit so hard in late game in contrast to late game small ships (besides destroyer but that also dies easily)

Missile reloading, we could make it easier by having the launch bays closer to eachother like in the beta and maybe starting with 2 and unlocking an adittional 2 until we have say...8 which could be interesting.

Science, More types of Yamatos will make it interesting, maybe even having the control of firing the yamato switch to science so that more communication with pointing BC just like Helm to Weps w/ missiles.

Repair Bots make the Dust Cannon Useless

Sheilds we could add more variants like Forward, side sheilds and Behind the BC as well. plus more variants on charging sheilds (minelayer can play a better role?)

And of course we should get a new weapon tier in (excluding Projectiles and small ships) we only have Broadside, Burst lazer and kinetics. Something that is like Kinetics but fits 2 different roles like Kinetics did (except Gatling Kinetics got nerfed so bad that nobody uses it for long range uses)

[WhyteDragon]

boarding sucks because auto-turrets are to strong and you dont get any Player and/or NPC allies to board with you
(i suggest removing all autoturrets except the 2 that gaurd the bridge)

... what.

Boarding is awesome.

You guys are all just doing it wrong.

Small ships cant take more then a couple of direct hits from BCs because BCs hit so hard in late game in contrast to late game small ships (besides destroyer but that also dies easily)

Depending on how you define late game it's possible to deck out with shields, but yes -- that is true, which is the reason why people hide behind the BC in the first place.

Missile reloading, we could make it easier by having the launch bays closer to eachother like in the beta and maybe starting with 2 and unlocking an adittional 2 until we have say...8 which could be interesting.

That doesn't make it interesting at all. Click drag click drag click drag. All you're doing is adding more work and making it faster. O.-

Science, More types of Yamatos will make it interesting, maybe even having the control of firing the yamato switch to science so that more communication with pointing BC just like Helm to Weps w/ missiles.

Not sure I buy that completely. Yes, adding more 'things' to science would give it more appeal. More Yamatos? Not quite sold. Also not buying science firing Yamato to begin with -- doesn't fit the station's role at all. We can't just toss abilities willynilly.

Repair Bots make the Dust Cannon Useless

... really not sure how that's relevant, but I think we already established Siretu wanted to add more worth to the Dust Cannon.

Sheilds we could add more variants like Forward, side sheilds and Behind the BC as well. plus more variants on charging sheilds (minelayer can play a better role?)

Power is complex enough already. Don't try and overcomplicate a role that is already strenuous...

And of course we should get a new weapon tier in (excluding Projectiles and small ships) we only have Broadside, Burst lazer and kinetics. Something that is like Kinetics but fits 2 different roles like Kinetics did (except Gatling Kinetics got nerfed so bad that nobody uses it for long range uses)

... are we even on the same page anymore? You're throwing out random ideas without even looking at the issue -- navigation is plenty interesting. Weapons already has it's own worth and contributes significantly to combat. Power is essential and key already. Making them more complex for no other reason than the sake of making them more complex is silly. Maybe weapons could stand a bit of spicing up, but at the same time I've heard it from Siretu's mouth that he liked the fact that weapons console was in fact so simple and easy to pick up. It's a station noobs can use while feeling like they're contributing to the fight.

[zakhennahr]

This conversation seems to be going a bit off-topic. We're trying to figure out what makes the map fun, and how we can take advantage of that, and general deficiencies in the game style, and how we can mitigate these factors.

[WhyteDragon]

This conversation seems to be going a bit off-topic. We're trying to figure out what makes the map fun, and how we can take advantage of that, and general deficiencies in the game style, and how we can mitigate these factors.

I get that. However, I would say that a lot of essential tasks at the moment are rather dull -- and they often get pushed onto the new players, which is a large issue. Things like repairing are incredibly necessary but aren't very engaging at all. I think a large step in making CC more fun as a game would be fixing all the inferior aspects -- after all, the weakest link is usually going to be an issue.